Et Tu, Trump Supporters?

One reason we were told to vote for Donald Trump was because he was the man who would fight the PC crowd. What better way to tell the Social Justice mob to shove it than to vote for Trump?

However, a funny thing happened on the way to Trumpville. Trump supporter Laura Loomer rushed the stage during a recent Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar. Why? The production had a Donald Trump character stand in for Caesar.

Spoiler alert for the historically or literary uniformed: in Julius Caesar, Caesar is assassinated.

Is the depiction of the assassination of the President less than a week after the attempted assassination of Republicans unseemly? Yes. Is rushing the stage an appropriate recourse of action? Of course not.

You cannot ridicule the left for its cries of “hate speech is not free speech,” and then equate Julius Caesar with real violence. Theater actors who may despise Trump have First Amendment rights too. And no, they do not have the blood of Steve Scalise on their hands.

Some Trump supporters who love to bash “liberal snowflakes” are becoming just as bad. Campus rioters do not get to say that their rioting is free speech. Laura Loomer should also not be able to say that disrupting a public event is free speech. Neither Trump haters nor Trump fanatics should get a heckler’s veto.

If conservatives do not condemn Loomer and her supporters, we will correctly be labeled hypocrites. We would only be opposing those “snowflakes” who attempt to shut us up. It is easy to be for free speech when you are the one who is being targeted by the censors. When your opponents are the ones who are under siege, it is much harder.

The Resistance, Antifa, or whatever they call themselves are not fighting fascism or Nazism when they attempt to shut Trump supporters up. Similarly, Trump’s most cultish fans are not fighting “Joseph Goebbels” when they rush the stage during a Shakespeare production.

The irony of the far left’s argument is that they claim to fight fascism by urging the adoption of speech codes, which are actually fascistic. Apparently, Laura Loomer and her defenders are no different.

We over here on the right side of the aisle have spent much time and energy defending free speech. Some of us may not care for Milo Yiannopoulos or his shtick, but we believe that he should be allowed to speak without UC Berkeley being burned to the ground. We also believe that you do not have the right to punch a Nazi in the face, because even dirtbags have rights. Further, people have a tendency to flippantly use the word “Nazi” in political discourse online.

We should continue to defend free speech. This also means we should defend theater performers from Trump supporters who sound an awful lot like the campus left. As for those Trump supporters, they can start the journey toward being true free speech advocates by actually reading Julius Caesar.

About The Author

Alex Christy is a recent graduate of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. He majored in political science, specializing in International Relations, and has an interest in American history. Alex Christy is a native of Everett, Washington.